Bone Wires is full of chills and thrills

In Bone Wires, Michael Shean creates a techno-world of the future, where cars are equipped with autodrive, dance floors are suspended from the ceiling, and soft drinks have self-chilling mechanism. Shean grabs your attention immediately, and pulls readers into the high-tech world of 2076, where police departments belong to the private sector, making concerns of profits and losses, and public relations often take priority over justice.

Detective Dan Gray wants it all: the promotion, the money, the prestige, the girl and he knows how to play the game to get it. Suddenly, it appears that he has just gotten all of it, at what price?

His new girlfriend, Angie, is connected to a case involving some grissly murders, that is supposed to be closed, but just doesn’t want to stay that way; the same case that propelled him into his new promotion.

He has a hunch things aren’t what they seem, but he doesn’t know who to trust. Everyone seems to have their own agenda: a vice cop that wants to use his girlfriend as a snitch, a coroner and an officer from the evidence room that want to fry the vice cop, a fellow homicide cop that is suddenly looking out for his best interests, a police agency that’s more concerned about profit margins than it is about people and seems content to sweep his case under the rug, and a girlfriend who may have something to hide. Finding the truth may threaten his job and his girl.

Shean has good, clear character development and a main plot, with enough sub-plotting to create tension and keep readers interest. The pacing keeps readers moving right along. Although there are a few typos, the story carries its weight well enough that the distraction caused is minor, if at all. The descriptive language is at times exquisite, as in the following example, found on page 201, (Kindle version):

“By the time he piled himself into the car, he was barely able

to focus. And so  he didn’t try. Instead he sat there, sprawled

in the driver’s seat, staring out at the empty street for what felt

like hours as his thoughts warred with one another. Finally out

of the mental carnage came the victor, a sharp thought, a thought

that glowed and smoked as if it were a blade pulled out of a torturer’s

coals.”

Shean has shown himself to be a talented writer, with Bone Wires. A must read for those who enjoy science fiction, mystery, and dark fiction. There is even a bit of the romance element thrown in. Bone Wires is available at Amazon (Kindle), Amazon (print), Barnes & Noble, and Books A Million.